Volume Five - The Age of Decline & Crass Stupidity - Some comments and a final rant! . . .

In an ideal world the entire dock would be excavated, all waste disposed of in an environmentally effective manner and the marina extended for the betterment and use of all. Maybe, if the pontoon hasn’t completely dissolved in its acidic bath, its remains could be recovered, renovated, rebuilt and exhibited as a monument to an age when people were vastly more enlightened and the majority had greater skill and could get out of bed in the morning. It would honour all those who worked and died as proud dockers, mariners, engineers and masons, not forgetting the miners and navvies who toiled in such difficult and dangerous conditions with minimal return for their labours.

Thank you for reading this paper and I trust you found it interesting, informative and a tribute to all those wonderful engineers and mariners of our lost heritage.

To the perpetrators of this farce; thanks for getting it wrong and giving us some light entertainment. To Lord Denning et al; thank you for your learned judgement but in reality only the law professionals gained by it. Maybe someone decided that the judgement should not be saved for posterity; that’s why our Company solicitor can’t find a full transcript of the judgement!

To the unenlightened at the Cardiff Bay Development Authority, which is now defunct and unaccountable, and South Glamorgan County Council, also defunct and unaccountable – I’ll be seeing you in hell!

Hell is apparently where I’m heading since I recall Mr. Smith supervising me whilst I heated some hexagonal tool-steel bar to make a cold chisel in the blacksmiths hearth as an apprentice. Merrily hammering away on the anvil, steel on steel, sparks flying, he chuntered “I know somewhere where you’ll be kept busy for eternity lad”! I think it was intended to be complement upon my progress and developing engineering skills but I’m not absolutely sure of this!